May 25, 2020

Russian Scientists Plan to Send Quail Eggs to the ISS (Source: RIA)
It is planned to bring the incubator with quail eggs to study the development of embryos to the International Space Station next year, said Vladimir Sychev, deputy director for science at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the scientist, last year there were a lot of questions about how to solve the problem of fixing eggs in space. "Since formaldehyde is supposed to be used for this, the equipment should be absolutely safe for astronauts," he said.

Quail experiments have already been conducted in space, but not yet on the ISS. In 1979, quail eggs were first sent to orbit on the Bion biosatellite. In the 90s, at the Mir orbital station, astronauts conducted experiments with both quail eggs and the chicks themselves and adult birds. So, in 1990, the first quail hatched in orbit, and in 1999 the quail born in outer space managed to be returned alive to Earth. (5/25)

Congress Urged to Fund Filters to Remove Cancer-Causing Chemicals Related to Patrick Space Force Base (Source: Florida Today)
Jim Holmes' 17-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), an extremely rare, difficult-to-treat brain cancer. Kaela, a Satellite High School student, died March 29, 2019, three days after her 17th birthday. "I lost my only child due to being poisoned by the same military that I faithfully served and fought for," Holmes told the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations. All he wants now is for the military to take responsibility for the PFAS contamination they caused and the lives those chemicals have claimed.

PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The chemicals, once commonly used in firefighting foams, are unregulated. But science is finding that even at extremely low exposures, the compounds are implicated in some types of cancer. Test have found the same chemicals in groundwater in Satellite Beach and Cocoa Beach. As people were getting sick and desperate, the military remained adamant for years that they never owned, leased or used an old dump site just south of Patrick Air Force Base.

But last year later, the DoD reversed its long-standing position and admitted its forces are responsible for whatever military waste might be buried there. The about-face came after military researchers recently unearthed some 70-odd-year-old documents seemingly out of nowhere, proving the military had used the site as a waste dump. After devoting 30 years of his his life to the U.S. military, Holmes always thought the top brass would always have his back. Now, after losing Kaela, he says he couldn’t have been more wrong. "The Air Force just acts like it doesn't matter," said Holmes, 48, who grew up in Denver Colorado and also served in the Air Force. (5/24)

Astronauts Comfortable With SpaceX Flight Risks (Source: Business Insider)
NASA estimated there's a 1-in-276 chance the flight could be fatal and a 1-in-60 chance that some problem would cause the mission to fail (but not kill the crew). NASA's Commercial Crew Program requires providers like SpaceX and Boeing, which is also developing a new spaceship (called the CST-100 Starliner), to meet a raft of safety requirements before flying any astronauts. Among that checklist, loss-of-crew and loss-of-mission stand out.

LOC is the chance of the crew dying in a phase of the mission. Historically, NASA's space shuttle had a LOC of about 1 in 68: The program launched 135 missions, but two (Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003) ended in tragedy, each killing seven astronauts. LOM is the chance a mission might go awry — as Boeing's Starliner spaceship did during an uncrewed test flight in December (software errors were to blame) — but not leave the crew dead.

For their part, astronauts Behnken and Hurley have accepted the risk calculated by NASA and SpaceX. "I think we're really comfortable with it," Behnken said just after the safety review for Demo-2 finished. Behnken added that, by he and Hurley working with SpaceX on Crew Dragon for roughly five years, they'd gained more insight into the ways the mission could fail "than any crew has in recent history, just in terms of understanding the different scenarios that are at play." (5/24)

United Space Structures Exits Stealth Mode (Source: USS)
Our mission is to build a large self-sustaining facility that will house hundreds of people and to start construction by 2026. United Space Structures (USS) has developed a unique construction process for building very large permanent structures within lunar lava tubes. The advantage of building within lava tubes is that the lava tube provides protection from radiation and meteor strikes and so the habitat structure does not require to be hardened from these elements. The structures only need to create an atmospheric structurally stable enclosure that is thermally insulated. Click here. (5/24)

Rocketman (and Woman): Elon and Gwynne, the Pair Who Made SpaceX (Source: Phys.org)
"I messed up the first three launches, the first three launches failed. Fortunately the fourth launch—that was the last money that we had—the fourth launch worked, or that would have been it for SpaceX. But fate liked us that day," said Elon Musk, the company's founder and chief engineer, in 2017. "We started with just a few people, who didn't really know how to make rockets. The reason I ended up being the chief engineer... was not because I wanted to, it's because I couldn't hire anyone. Nobody good would join," he added.

Born in South Africa, Musk immigrated to Canada at age 17, then to the US, where he amassed his fortune in Silicon Valley with the startup PayPal. SpaceX's aim, when it was incorporated on March 14, 2002, was to make low-cost rockets to travel one day to Mars—and beyond. The 11th employee hired that year turned out to be someone good: Gwynne Shotwell, who was in charge of business development, soon established herself as Musk's right-hand woman.

"Elon has the vision, but you need someone who can execute on the plan, and that's Gwynne," said Scott Hubbard, a professor at Stanford University and former director of NASA's Ames Research Center. Hubbard met Musk in 2001, when the thirty-year-old entrepreneur was making his first forays into the space industry. The 56-year-old Shotwell, who became SpaceX president and chief operating officer in 2008, is a self-described nerd. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in mechanical engineering and was elected in February to the National Academy of Engineering. (5/25)

Free Enterprise, Not Government Bureaucracy, is Returning Americans to Space (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
For space buffs like me, that nine years has seemed like an eternity. But even for non-space enthusiasts, the time lost in terms of American leadership in space should have been a concern, if not a humiliation. During that time, NASA has had to book flights on the dependable but aging Soyuz platform, and under ever more expensive terms. Today, a single seat on Soyuz costs NASA (that’s you, taxpayers) $86 million in American currency paid to Russia, and Russia has jacked up the price 400% over the last decade. NASA will likely end up paying Russia more than $3.4 billion for access to the International Space Station before our dependency is over.

But even that was cheaper than the estimated $450 million cost of a single space shuttle mission, which is part of why the program was phased out. While impressive at its debut, the space shuttle turned out to be an expensive, complicated and troublesome platform that never lived up its billing as efficient and reusable. Over 70% of SpaceX’s Falcon launch vehicle is reusable and available for relatively rapid reuse with minimal refurbishment. For several years now SpaceX has been perfecting the reusability of its platform, and that’s part of why a seat on the Crew Dragon costs NASA just $55 million—a significant savings over Soyuz and a fraction of the cost of the space shuttle. And because Crew Dragon is capable of carrying up to seven astronauts, the cost per seat in the future could be even lower.

So American taxpayers are getting a safer, more advanced and much less expensive manned space program. How did this happen? For several years now, private space companies have been launching satellites both for governments and for companies, outside the grip of government bureaucracy and, most important, disrupting the defense contractor model of what the government calls “space acquisitions.” The result is cheaper, better, faster access to low earth orbit, and savings for both taxpayers and the private sector. Today, with entrepreneurial, private sector space companies driving technological innovation and gaining cost efficiencies, America is returning to leadership in manned space flight. (5/25)

First Commercial Space Taxi a Pit Stop on Musk's Mars Quest (Source: Phys.org)
It all started with the dream of growing a rose on Mars. That vision, Elon Musk's vision, morphed into a shake-up of the old space industry, and a fleet of new private rockets. Now, those rockets will launch NASA astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station—the first time a for-profit company will carry astronauts into the cosmos.

It's a milestone in the effort to commercialize space. But for Musk's company, SpaceX, it's also the latest milestone in a wild ride that began with epic failures and the threat of bankruptcy. If the company's eccentric founder and CEO has his way, this is just the beginning: He's planning to build a city on the red planet, and live there. "What I really want to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes and that you can go," Musk told a cheering congress of space professionals in Mexico in 2016.

Ex-astronaut and former Commercial Spaceflight Federation chief Michael Lopez-Alegria says, "I think history will look back at him like a da Vinci figure." Musk has become best known for Tesla, his audacious effort to build an electric vehicle company. But SpaceX predates it. At 30, Musk was already wildly rich from selling his internet financial company PayPal and its predecessor Zip2. He arranged a series of lunches in Silicon Valley in 2001 with G. Scott Hubbard, who had been NASA's Mars czar and was then running the agency's Ames Research Center. (5/23)

Enormous Stakes for Trump, NASA With Crew Launch (Source: Washington Post)
The launch of NASA astronauts will be a historic mission — the first launch of humans to orbit from U.S. soil since the space shuttle retired almost a decade ago. It’s also a make or break moment for the Trump administration. If it goes well, it would be a moment of triumph for an administration that boasts it is “renewing American leadership in space” and would no doubt end up in election-year campaign ads. If something goes wrong, it would be a staggering blow that could send the space agency reeling and jeopardize the White House’s signature mission to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. (5/23)